A maelstrom of ribbons of light, suffused with overpowering scent, enveloped me in a luminous cocoon of red cinnamon, orange citrus, yellow marigold, green mint, blue berry, and purple grape. It squeezed me relentlessly with a burning pressure, like linen under an iron. All that I was, all that I had become—the hate and the anger and the uncompromising venom—it seared away in moments. Gone. It pried the malevolence from my soul like an impacted tooth twisted and wrenched from my jaw, but in a slow tearing of tissue. This unexpected magic broke me apart, intent on reassembling me as something else. And it made sure I knew it.
I could do nothing other than endure; when it ended, it left dark nothingness.
—
Eventually, I became aware of the cool misty air passing through my nostrils and filling my lungs. I lay on uncomfortable cold stone. The ozone scent of lightning and the smell of pulverized vines filled the air. I heard the tentative twitter and trill of a bird, then another joining it in chorus. Insects ticked. I realized sunlight played upon my side soothingly. Dappled spots of reflected light tumbled and shot across the dark red behind my closed eyelids.
I inhaled again...
Ponies. I smelled them. I heard the clop of hooves in the far distance, and the metal clatter of fine shoes against stone, approaching me. Though no breeze played in my fur, I heard the familiar fizzy-yet-sailcloth-like sound of wind ruffling a mane. I should have heard my own mane, blown my the neverending ethereal zephyr of the magic pulse, but mine lay limp from my neck and across my withers. It had not lain inert since I'd been a foal.
"Princess Luna!"
I gasped. I recognized my sister's voice, a sound that another me had grown to loathe... but that other me was a distant thing, a character in a storybook that had become real in breadth of emotion and depth of understanding, but still other, not me… not any more.
A strong magic had rent me in two, leaving this me and that other me who had hurt, been badly hurting, and had been willing to hurt others to make the pain less horrendous. I could see her, know her, and yet not be her. A dizzying sense of detachment, for sure.
My sister's voice. My name. Spoken kindly.
How could that be?
I gasped and opened my eyes, and looked up at a beautiful white alicorn, wings spread in the rays of a newly risen sun, feathers agleam. She towered over me, even as she slowly approached, saying, "It has been a thousand years since I have seen you like this."
A thousand years! I glanced to my other self and saw it. I could see when it started as a bad seed within me. I had been the little sister raised by my big sister, forever it seemed, for I had no memory of parents, nor stories about who they may have been, or what kingdoms they may have ruled. Just my sister, who ran everything. I don't recall when the darkness bloomed, but it came after my mane began to flow and the magic, foreshadowed by my name, became the crescent orb of the wretched cutie mark that filled the ink spill that covered my flank. Oh, so great a responsibility for I would thence forward raise the moon! But, with the moon came the responsibility of the night. So very few ponies craved the company of the night. I remember foreseeing tomorrows of loneliness and darkness, all forced upon me.
The white alicorn, my sister, folded her wings and knelt within reach. Her gold crown and jeweled breast plate dazzled my eyes. The smell of heat-seared horse waft from her; of course, she had just raised the sun. She said, "Time to put our differences behind us. We were meant to rule together, little sister."
I remembered how my bearded tutor had done another of his stupid friendship magic experiments and had, of course, gotten it all wrong, finding the diametric opposite of friendship in some awkward dimension, then for some incomprehensible reason, went on to incarnate it. Yes, the spirit of chaos brought Celestia and me together. That in itself should have been an evil omen.
Harmony did not choose us.
We stole harmony from the tree that had grown from its seed. That my sister and I had a shared purpose—arguably a type of harmony—had allowed us to harvest harmony's gems, to wield them.
But we proved ultimately unworthy of them, and by "we", I mean mostly me. Harmony requires two or more pitches in music, or two or more ponies in life. I had gone severely out of tune with Celestia. Every night, so alone. No one to say my name, to praise me for duty rendered; only stars for company.
All the while, she had ponies who reveled in her precious sun…
She had answered my impatient complaints with irritating words. Wait. Study and learn your power over the night. Delight and revelations will come, if only for the price of your patience. Your night will be as essential to our little ponies as my day is to them now. My years tell me this, sister… She had said that.
Had had the audacity to say that.
And had said it one too many times. While her years spoke to her, my youth spoke to me. And though I addressed our subjects and asked for them to spend their nights with me, they all eventually refused. The light of the moon was not enough. It stole color and warmth from them, they said, until all they craved was sleep.
In that thought had been born a nightmare. If they would not love me, how could I love them? How could I care for them at all?
And soon I saw almost none of them in the liminal hours of twilight and dawn whilst I was still awake. Fewer and fewer ponies appeared. Then I realized Celestia herself had begun exclusively bringing my meals. No servants would face me.
I don't know when I began yelling, when I began scaring the day ponies away. But I can see now that I did. Not only had my nights become desolate, but I had made what little day I enjoyed just as cold and lonely.
Nightmare Moon consumed me. If Celestia could rule the world, and hide me away in the useless night, it seemed obvious to me: she had ceased to love me, too. It left me no choice but to end the reign of the sun.
The price was only my soul… A price paid in full a thousand years ago.
Now, six other ponies, each bearing an element of harmony, said in unison, "Sister?"
I glanced at them, their coats and manes forming a living rainbow. I looked at the shattered armor that smoked and ticked beside me. I opened my eyes wider to see the dirt and vines that had invaded our Great Hall of Progress. Slime and moss draped from cracks and ledges. Much of the stained glass that I remembered from what seemed like a day ago, had been blasted, shattered. The jagged teeth of what remained looked bleached and whitened like the eyes of a blind pony. The roof had exploded down to one side of the hall. Trees grew from the rubble.
I remembered the exhilarating power of having projected my hate outward.
I had done this. I remembered my rage at Celestia isolating me from the last ponies that would face me, my hoof-servants. It was my final desolation. I was willing to kill my sister, if that was what it took to take over the sun. I armored myself in resentment and in hate, which turned into physical adamantine plated over impenetrable steel. I raised the moon and eclipsed the sun. The heat of it burned my coat black and ravaged my body. I cared nothing for my appearance for if nopony would see me, it rendered my appearance meaningless.
And I fought. And destroyed the beautiful castle we had built together, no thought to what I might do to our subjects who depended upon our doing our royal duty. Had Celestia removed all the servants and staff, or just sequestered them from my presence? Had I killed anypony that day?
I had cared not a wit.
My anger and youthful vigor had made me the more powerful fighter, the aggressor when I had been the victim before. It was fitting that Celestia should have turned to the elements of harmony to fight back. At that revelation, glee had filled me. I could destroy both her and the concept of harmony in one blow!
It was an abuse that we had harvested them. It was worse that she would have used them in such discord.
It was no wonder that her sad victory over me had cursed us both. For a thousand years, I would be the mare on the surface of the moon. The next thousand, it would be her: the spots on the face of the sun.
But the second thousand years had not come to pass. New ponies, both humble and worthy to bear the elements of harmony, had found them and possessed them. These ponies, exemplifying harmony in friends, had recreated the gems—loyalty, generosity, laughter, honesty, and kindness—when I had in fact destroyed them with my own hooves, just as thoroughly as had my sister destroyed their essence a thousand years ago using them in despair. These six new ponies had reconstituted them, by exemplifying them, and had powered them with the magic within their hearts.
I looked at myself and saw a light blue-gray mane cascading to the flagstone. My fur had also lightened. My hooves looked smaller; the gold shoes encasing them seemed overlarge. It all began to make sense. The separation of the selves. The rendering down of my broken self. The reassembly into the new.
One fact of life had been that youth gave way to age. Nothing, not even magic, had ever been able to change that.
Amazingly, the elements had done the impossible. They had restored me to that foal, just on the precipice of maturity when her mane would begin to flow in the constant breeze of the magic pulse, that foal who had just earned her cutie mark by raising the moon.
Harmony might be restored, were I willing to choose a different path.
My sister spoke, and I looked up at her. "Will you accept my friendship?"
H-how, how could she ask that after what I had done to her and the citizens of our little kingdom? After I had broken her trust, their trust, and the responsibility that accepting the elements of harmony had laid upon us?
But that was the other me thinking.
Tears of loneliness and regret cascaded down my cheeks. The heat of hope fought with the chill of maybe loosing a single chance if I did not act. I knew myself undeserving of any forgiveness, but when I opened my mouth out came, "I'm so sorry! I missed you so much, big sister!" The sister that played with me and let me bask in her sun, and saw me through my lessons, and had me along when she visited our subjects: I so very much missed that sister.
I missed her because I had pushed her away.
"I've missed you, too," she said, lowering her head to nuzzle me. But I sprang up and she did, too, in surprise as I leaned into the warmth of a hug. I remembered a thousand years of supplying the consciousness of the moon, staring down at the face of the world, and watching the beasts and the ponies and all the magical creatures, and not understanding time. But now I understood a thousand years.
It had been too long.
—
The pink pony called for a party.
We flew from the ruins of a our castle, past the border of the forest that had been the extent of our kingdom. In exhaustion from my ordeal, and having flown further than a foal might do so comfortably, I slept.
I woke that afternoon in flight on a two-by-two carriage, the sound of pegasi flapping to keep us aloft, as we descended into a town by-far more prosperous than ever I had seen before. There were white stucco buildings with roofs so freshly thatched, I could smell the straw. The park in which we landed was filled with ponies of every color and of all races. Red streamers decorated the trees and eaves. Fruit-colored balloons waved in the uncertain breezes while signs welcoming "Princess Luna!!!" fluttered as if trying to speak. I saw tables of fragrant and freshly baked cakes, barrels of diced vegetables, and heaps of salad in every weedy variety. Music filled the air, accompanied by song and screams of happiness.
As we landed, cheerful ponies mobbed us, unconcerned that they were commoners touching royalty. A garland of heavily scented red roses and and white chrysanthemums magicked itself around me neck. I stared down at it in surprise. It almost made me sneeze. Then came another wreath of daisies, both plain and purple-orange exotics.
From that point on, I saw nothing more. My tears of joy and confusion refused to cease. I might forever be known as Princess Raindrop.
But in my heart, ice remained.
Nightmare Moon this very morning had returned. She had sent Celestia to the sun to roast as spots across its face. That very same me had then proceeded to hurt and scare the folk of this town, had later threatened the ponies that would bear the elements of harmony by collapsing cliffs, wrecking bridges, and sending wild beasts. I had sought the elements to destroy my one vulnerability.
How could the ponies of Ponyville, of this new expanded Equestria, consider me worthy of their acclaim? What was I that they could simply love me? I was as much Nightmare Moon as the princess they called Luna.
It wasn't until that night, went I lay in a moon-shaped bed in a tower, in this fabulous new city named Canterlot built high on the highest hill, that I began to understand. It was not that they considered me worthy, that any of my sister's subjects considered me worthy.
It was me having to be worthy, me becoming worthy.
As I lay there under a canopy, my moon having been raised by Celestia's magic, cool linen sheets pulled up to my chin... it was at that moment that I understood.
They celebrated the end of Nightmare Moon.
But the nightmare continued. I could look at it any time I wanted, even if I knew that it wasn't the me that I had become now. But it was still me. Nightmare Moon had not ended. And she had done bad things. I had. And what did I earn for that?
My sister's love?
The affection of my subjects?
A party!?
I was a nightmare. And that, of course, was the answer. I had unleashed a nightmare upon Equestria, but had never paid the consequence or experienced the fear. If they could love me even after what I did, I must become worthy.
Until I experienced the nightmare myself, I could not be redeemed.
Oddly, I found myself dreaming. And in dreaming, if you find yourself aware, you can do anything. So I found my dark part, that other me that drifted ominously like a starry cloud of darkness in the ethereal dreamscape of imagination. I told it, I said, you are nightmares. Every time I sleep, you belong in here, not out there. Remind me. Do not let me forget. Do not let me reach the fruit that hangs tantalizing above my head or drink from the cool pool in which my hooves are bathed. You unleashed nightmares upon the world. You are me, and that cannot be forgiven.
This thing, this friend of pain, whispered gently, "I am Tantabus," and it seared me with a stroke of lightning.
I woke in a sweat.
Moonlight streamed through the window onto my pillow. And, strangely enough… I was smiling.
Author's Note
Luna's baroque voice works with my tendency toward overly long sentences and lack of concision. Consider it delivered as a monologue declaimed on a stage in a dark theater and I think the story will hit the right note.
When I started at about 10 PM, I was steaming hard toward the shore of 1000 words with no expectation of enough coal to fire the engine. By 4 AM, I came into dock having passed through the bay, sailed up the river, and found a port at the lake house at 2500 words. I consider this an experiment in voice and speed writing. I apologize if my prose is not as clean as in my usual manuscripts. It is not an excuse for the sins of the writer, however. I ask for none of that.
And despite it all: Critique Requested. As always, please be specific about what didn't work for you; tell me what it is that you thought I meant so I can figure out how that differed from what I intended. I will likely fix typos and stuff, so please, feel free for the first few days of the posting.
This is the result of a prompt on Equestria Daily's Writer's Training Grounds. It is also a postscript to Sisters in All but Blood and Friendship is Magic Part2 (S1E2)
